George Osborne’s problem is that the UK economy started to flatline well before the eurozone went into meltdown in the summer months. And unemployment also began to rise well before the likes of Italy hit trouble.

So the chancellor can’t blame our current woes on what’s going on across the Channel. However, we’ll certainly be feeling the effects of the eurozone debacle in the coming months. Then the blame game will really begin in earnest.

Yesterday, the Guardian’s Polly Curtis also asked the same question: ‘Is the UK’s slow growth and high unemployment really caused by the eurozone crisis?’

She concluded:

The government’s claim that the eurozone is behind its economic struggles is weak. Sluggish growth pre-dates the current eurozone crisis. However, there are clear signs in the export market, employers’ own predictions and consumer confidence that the crisis is now beginning to bite here in the UK.

Reader comments

Public impressions are largely shaped by what people hear on the broadcast news and read on front pages of the press. With several speeches by Cameron about the need to quickly sort out the festering problems of the Eurozone, many will incline to believe those problems are causing Britain’s economy to flatline – or even to go into recession.

I think that both sides are right to an extent. The EZ crisis did not just start this summer, that is just when it started to lead the news every evening. The crisis has been ongoing since at least April 2010. Comparing the aggregated EZ output with the UK since the coalition took office is a bit deceptive. During that period contains a very strong German performance and they make up a large part of the EZ growth data. EZ growth excluding Germany and satellites would show a different picture.

The UK does a lot more trade with Ireland than Austria. Therefore, falling output in Ireland is going to affect the UK economy more than increasing output in Austria. That is not the whole story but it is an example why one should be wary of aggregated EZ data. For at least the last two years there has already been a two-speed EZ. The fast growing north that was generating growth through capital goods exports to emerging markets. Unfortunately UK trade was hitched to the slower growth type that was being affected by depressed output in the areas where our trade is focused.

The coalition started to affect UK output through their apocalyptic language completely unrelated to the EZ from around August 2010. They depressed expectations and can’t blame the EZ crisis, that was homegrown. Moreover, they created uncertainty in the banking sector by sending mixed signals to hold more capital, and lend more. The Vickers Independent Commission on Banking, created more regulatory uncertainty and encouraged the banking sector to run down their loan books. More capital equals lower lending and changes in capital requirements should be conducted leaning against the cycle. The VAT rise was unnecessary and countercyclical.

The likes of Ireland have been improving in recent quarters. Therefore, the coalition can’t completely blame the shambolic EZ for UK depressed output. It is a factor, but it does not explain the whole poor performance by the UK in 2011.

Right wing nutjobs will always have a semi-plausible media-friendly excuse lined up as for why their policies are manifestly – and inevitably – failing to deliver any improvements to the lives of anyone except their gang of sociopathic paymasters.

This is the same Sunny Hiundal who was busy arguing that the recession was a global recession and therefore nothing to do wtih Gordon Brown and Labour,

Tyler’s comment is a classic strawman. It is irrelevant to sunny’s point about George blaming the Euro Zone. It’s also a classic response you can watch in the houses parliament. MP poses question to speaker, PM stands up and says that you lot were worse. which is not an answer, it’s a deflection. There is no counter argument to Tyler. It’s a pointless point – debating whether Sunny is a hyppocrite, does not help decide the vallidity of his position.

Sunny is implying that George is being intellectually dishonest. Tyler’s statement deflects us from considering whether George knows he is misrepresenting the truth.

Apologies for mispelling your name but I was typing on my blackberry. Still doesn’rt absolve you from making a pretty hypocritical partisan attack and when rumbled throwing one of your special playground ad hom insults out there.

If you knew any real world economics you would also know that the peak in unemployemnt tends to occur about 18 months after a country leaves recession. There’s a lag. If unemployement keeps shooting up you might have more of a point but at the moment it is almost impoosible to tell.

@ 13 Mark Redwood

Gordon brown didn’t cause the global recession, but he did leave the UK singularly badly placed to weather it, by ruNning up dfebt, running deficits, increasing spending massively leaving a strucutural deficit hard to close and increasing the size and cost of government.

You can quiblle about what started when, but Osbourne is correct. The eurozone crisis is almost certainly affecting the UK economy. Hell, its affecting the world economy. Economies don’t grow uniformally, and government legislation and interest rate changes also take quite a long time for their effects to filter through to the economy, so picking a “start date” for sub-par growth and pinning it on one factor is almost impoosible.

At the morent UK growth isn’t really out of line with europe, and the most likely drag on it is the underperdormance of financial services, which the UK heavily relies on. It is, after all, a financial crisis.

Still doesn’rt absolve you from making a pretty hypocritical partisan attack and when rumbled

you didn’t rumble me at all. I pointed to analysis by four people using solid data to make their claim. You came back with the childish ‘yeah but Gordon Brown WOZ UR DAD’ – I hardly feel ‘rumbled’. Nice try though.

I’m sitting here looking at a couple of bloomberg charts. One of european countries gdp growth and one of european unemployment rates. In neither does the uk particularly stand out

As I said though, had you actually bothered to read it, is that the data itself is lagging and unemployemnt tends to peak only about 18 months after the end of a recession as a rule of thumb. Osbourne is correct when he says the eurozone crisis is affecting UK growth – it is affecting global growth.

Its impoosible to unpick economic data and pinpoint an exact start date for something or

It’s impossible to unpick the exact start date for something out of what is non-specific data with huge numbers of dependent inputs.

But that’s not really your point is it. What you want is propaganda to try and bash your enemy. Somehow I think he’ll be ok.

The coalition haven’t been in power for long enough for most of their changes to filter through fully to the economy, and nor should we forget that austerity actually only started this year.

We could look at labours record though, when they did have an extended period of power, and from those same gdp charts oit’s easy to show the UK recession was its worst since the great depression and much worse than the rest of europe bar greece and ireland.

I’d like to know from Tyler at what point he thinks the Coalition are responsible for anything. He seems to be saying that the lousy GDP and unemployment figures are all the fault of that Gordon Brown.

But of course we now know the next rightist argument is that it’s all the fault of those Europeans and nothing to do with the great Osborne.

Btw, does anyone remember an article by Osborne just before the crash telling us how we all had to learn from the miracle in Ireland. Well, that went well…